Visit to a Shipbuilding Yard

Hein Petersen, vom Schiffsjungen zum Matrosen

Take a revealing tour along a coast of contrasts, from the folksy freshness of Whitby to the coaly Tyne, queen of all rivers.

A silent film depicting the ship-breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh, a final destination for ships too old to ply the oceans. Every year, hundreds of ships are sent to these yards. And every year, thousands of people come to these yards in search of jobs. Risking their lives to save themselves from hunger, they breathe in asbestos dust and toxic waste. The ship has to die and man has to help it die, as if man and vessel were united in common bondage. The Last Rites bears testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

A bright outlook in Birkenhead for a thriving British enterprise.

Bobbing around on Mediterranean waters aboard the Ocean Viking, aid workers from the French relief service SOS Méditerranée gaze at the horizon. Is that a rubber dinghy in the distance, or is it garbage? The organization sails up and down the Libyan coast looking to pick up refugees in boats. On board is a 30-strong team ready to offer help and support refugees with their asylum applications.

As historic ships vanish from British waters, a group of passionate volunteers fights to save the Balmoral—a 1949 passenger vessel moored in Bristol’s iconic harbour—battling time, bureaucracy, and financial struggles to preserve a piece of maritime history before it’s lost forever.

The wharf in Landskrona launches its final boat as the workers get ready for unemployment.

Pozdrav Volgo-Donu

7 mill. HK – en film om Burmeister & Wain

Le Normandie, un géant à la française

Documentary about the building of ships at Barrow-in-Furness.

Experts rebuild iconic sections of the Titanic, using shipbuilding industry methods of a hundred years ago.

Documents the Cockatoo Island Dockyard occupation and industrial actions of 1989.

The UCS struggle is a campaign film supporting the fight to retain their jobs by the workers at Upper Clyde Shipyards who developed a new weapon for waging this fight – the occupation and the work-in. The film was screened at the time at meetings attended overall by 25,000 workers. It includes a speech by Jimmy Reid.

The virtually untold story of the supersize steamship’s construction: how 15,000 men toiled day and night in life-threatening conditions to create a state-of-the-art floating city.

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

The traditional Hamburg shipyard looks back on 80 years of operation.

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.

Tyneside shipyard Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson turns out a beast of a tanker for the Argentine Navy.

A lovingly crafted home movie charting the maiden voyage of the Brown family's new yacht.